Congueror's Shards of Power

kickiusassius · November 2017

We finally reached Guild rank 5. First Stronghold boon within reach... Cheers and Joy! That was short lived once we realized over 2K Conqueror's Shards of Power needed to get the Barracks. We all want the Barracks as it will eventually grant a Power boon. Looks we have 4 options.

1. Play PvP, which none of us in our small guild want to play.

2. Spend roughly 6000 zen, just so we can build Barracks level 1, I've not looked into the future building requirements for fear I'll rage quit.

3. Run the Maze Engine, after 5 days you get 10 shards. This will take us a half a year.

4. Run Elemental Evil. You get 2, yes 2. Not sure if you can just continuely run this over and over, but that doesn't sound like fun.

WTF Cryptic... I don't mind spending some money to speed things along, but this is crazy. Barrack blocking casual players by basically forcing them play PvP or use a boat load of money is "not cool" (trying to keep this clean). Any changes planned to modify the Conqueror's Shards of Power requirement for the barracks? Have we missed a way to acquire the shards?

santralafax · November 2017

I didn't realize you could get those from EE. A particular quest?

greywynd · November 2017

Top box in the campaign. You have to run the task from the Harper to do 3 HEs in a zone to get partial payment towards the box, which has the option of 2 Conq Shards as reward.

metitermer · November 2017

We are having same issue here. As there is no way guild can contribute at large PVE scale we don't know how to deal with this. Situation would be better if we can somehow store AD in guild bank so Leader can pick it up and exchange it for zen to buy a box. Now it's more like to save on your own.. and with newbies that also want to save up for their stuff it will take some months.

It needs some rewamp.

pitshade · November 2017

I don't know the exact facts, but I've heard you can get shards by participating in Black Ice Domination without having to win? Even if victory is necessary, it is faction based and if you get in on a zerg, basically guaranteed.

preechr · November 2017

Its a stupid design decision that has been complained about before, and will likely only get fixed once everybody has their barracks built and upgraded
Our guild joined an Alliance that has a couple of very active PvP guilds, and they have helped us a lot
Some of us save up for Zen sales and buy the Stronghold packs and open them on 2xShards events
I run 7 Maze Engine quests per day (about 45 min max) and save the boxes from those for 2xShards events
We tried Black Ice Domination and several of us even tried building up alts for PvP, but since none of us enjoy PvP at all (like, ahem, 95% of this game's players,) that didn't help... though I guess it was fun for the PvP people to have fresh noobs to slaughter while we tried
Take the ArmPen boon instead for now and grind like crazy for the Barracks later, now that you know the cost
Try to get commitments from your most helpful members to get as many Conq Shards as they can, and it will eventually pay off

plasticbat · November 2017

Yes, the design is stupid and counter-productive.

However, unless it is changed, it is what it is right now.

To deal with the current situation, our guild (and then extended to the Alliance) is to call out BiD (Black Ice Domination) in Icewind Pass and D. Valley. When somebody notice there is a BiD, post that in alliance chat and everyone swamp to it as the same faction. No, you don't need to PVP. Most of the time are just wasting time standing there. When it is done, you get your shard. Typical line in chat is: DV BID AB (D.Valley has BiD and be Arcane Brotherhood).

kungomaximo · November 2017

Chest of Power (they have 100 shards of each type, conqueror too) are also in the AH, last i checked at about 140k AD

And if you wait for 2xShards of power event to open, you get double from them too

sgaddis13 · November 2017

My guild juuuuuust went through this same thing, and thankfully it just so happened that a) a couple of our strongest players tried PvP out and decided they kind of liked it (even though they generally lost pretty badly) and b) a higher ranked guild in our alliance happened to have a PvP team that helped us out. Otherwise, we would have been stuck. One of our guys has 8 toons, and he is going to devote a large chunk of his time to running them all through maze engine and stocking up on conqueror's shards for the next time this pops up.

I completely understand wanting guild's to embrace all aspects of the game, so I do understand why that requirement is there, but with the current state of PvP it makes it impossible for some guilds to do anything other than farm AD and buy their way out. We were very, very fortunate.

trgluestickz · December 2017

If you want an additional way to earn shards, PVE players can do black ice domination matches to complete the daily conqueror's shards quest. Black ice dom matches are easy to complete and don't involve any actual fighting thanks to black ice dom farming channels. There is one called BID_UP you could join. How it works is everybody who is a member of the channel takes an Arcane Brotherhood daily contract so that they are all on the same team. When someone sees a black ice dom match pop up, they announce it in the channel and then everyone storms that match for an easy win. Nobody really plays black ice domination anymore so you don't run into many PVPers and those you do encounter usually are in that zone for other reasons and won't attack. There are occasional trolls and newbs though so its best to stay in a group just in case.

I am in favor of removing the conqueror's shards requirement for the barracks altogether. It is not a PVP structure and thus should follow the same requirements as all the other non PVP structures. Cryptic's design of the barracks is making a huge chunk of PVE players who hate PVP think they need to que for PVP to upgrade their strongholds. This is bad for both PVPers and PVEers. PVPers don't want people who hate PVP in their matches because they don't tend to try as hard as people genuinely interested in PVP and are frequently unskilled. At the very least, shard farmers don't mooch near as bad as daily AD moochers do thanks to shards only being awarded on a win. PVEers who hate PVP simply learn to hate it even more when they think they are required to do it to get what they need for their strongholds. They aren't having fun and they aren't going to get attached to PVP this way so the barracks PVP shard requirement is pointless.

Another viable option I'd be in favor of is increasing the amount of conqueror's shards you can get per day. I'd also like to see the daily quest removed and replaced with simply getting X amount of conqueror's shards per win up to a weekly cap. This weekly cap should be fairly generous with you being able to earn more shards per week than you can currently get from doing PVP daily quests each day for one week.

greywynd · December 2017

The only problem there is you fill all the open AB contract slots and deny people that are actually trying to quest access to that side.

callumf · December 2017

Nice advice - Although I do go to Black Ice Domination and spend the odd hour pking and pvping there, but yes, its mostly pretty empty.

plasticbat · December 2017

greywynd said:
The only problem there is you fill all the open AB contract slots and deny people that are actually trying to quest access to that side.

Yes and no. Yes, the game will not grant more AB contract if the area has too many AB (those who have AB contract but left the area does not count in the limit). However, there is a way to deal with it. Your AB contract last for 12 hours. If I re-login the character within 12 hours, I don't need to worry about it. If I don't, I usually get the AB contract first before doing other quests. If I could not get the AB contract at that moment, I do other quests and then come back later. When there is no BiD running, it is easy to get AB contract. I usually bring up the map. If I can go to IcePass (not actually going there but just checking the map), it means I have the AB contract.

callumf · December 2017

plasticbat said:

greywynd said:
The only problem there is you fill all the open AB contract slots and deny people that are actually trying to quest access to that side.
Yes and no. Yes, the game will not grant more AB contract if the area has too many AB. However, there is a way to deal with it. Your AB contract last for 12 hours. If I re-login the character within 12 hours, I don't need to worry about it. If I don't, I usually get the AB contract first before doing other quests. If I could not get the AB contract at that moment, I do other quests and then come back later. When there is no BiD running, it is easy to get AB contract.

Is this why when I do BiD and am on Ten Towns we get owned?

plasticbat · December 2017

callumf#9018 said:

plasticbat said:

greywynd said:
The only problem there is you fill all the open AB contract slots and deny people that are actually trying to quest access to that side.
Yes and no. Yes, the game will not grant more AB contract if the area has too many AB. However, there is a way to deal with it. Your AB contract last for 12 hours. If I re-login the character within 12 hours, I don't need to worry about it. If I don't, I usually get the AB contract first before doing other quests. If I could not get the AB contract at that moment, I do other quests and then come back later. When there is no BiD running, it is easy to get AB contract.
Is this why when I do BiD and am on Ten Towns we get owned?

You got swamped. Once a long while, BiD is swamped by TT too.

thegravelnome · December 2017

That would probably be my group storming the valley in the name of 10 Towns LOL. I have been using this tactic as well.
It would be hilarious if our two armies actually met up and had a Grand battle LOL

joenettles · December 2017

The shards are a pain, but I agree go with armorpen/defense boon first. Barracks has to be rank 3 before you get any power, and needs to be rank 6 or 7 before it's worth using. You'll have to have Guild Hall rank 12 to get it ranked up high enough to use. Stables for ap/defense starts giving at rank 1 and you can always use it. Save the power boon for last so you can spend the next year stocking up on shards. You only get 4 boon structure total so you need to plan it out with what your guild wants.

benyr · December 2017

Ive been saying this for ages, and usually get shot down by PVPers who seem to like the system as it is. BID is the best option currently, but its still PVP and involves at least one person wasting game time waiting for an instance to pop.
For a boon that is both PVP and PVE friendly there should be an equal method through both means to earn them, ie same time commitment for same reward via a dungeon or quest line, the tiny amounts via ee and maze engine are just not helpful, especially when you need 12k of the shards to get the barracks to rank 9

callumf · December 2017

thegravelnome#9466 said:
That would probably be my group storming the valley in the name of 10 Towns LOL. I have been using this tactic as well.

It would be hilarious if our two armies actually met up and had a Grand battle LOL

Ahh I still hanker for the original LOTRO open world pvp where, literally, small armies would fight toe to toe, claw against shield, for fun and lols. Also RAGE stompers getting annoyed. We had one fight which was 70+ vs 70+ players where I was playing at about 5 frames per second. We actually crashed the server. I would love for there to be a similar thing in Neverwinter... pvp that actually rewarded open world group pvp ...

Congueror's Shards of Power

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